


Second Draft

by softsylvie



Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: 505 is still an adorable blue pupper, Black Hat gets a taste of karma though so that's a thing, also black hat is still a douche huge spoiler i know, demencia is cray but what else is new, god poor flug tho, he is my son, this turned into character development exercise whoops that moment when amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-01-04 05:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12162306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsylvie/pseuds/softsylvie
Summary: An origin story of sorts for none other than Demencia.When a rabid fangirl tries her luck at breaking into Black Hat manor a second time, Black Hat decides on a devious purpose for her as an example to his fanbase.  You'd think throwing someone to the horrific fate of unethical experimentation would at least discourage them a little from stalking you, buuuut you'd be wrong.





	1. The Intruder

“ _ **Flug!!**_ ”

He nearly dropped his flask, and on that vein he nearly destroyed the lower eastern wing of Black Hat manor. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been startled into it, if it was an accident, or hell, if Black Hat had come down personally and slapped the flask out of his grip, it still would have been all his fault just the same. It was a very good thing, when the intercom had jolted him, that Flug caught himself at the last second before the glass slipped his hands. A foot or so away, 505 mirrored his heaving sigh of relief perfectly. 

“U-uh… yes, Mister Black Hat, sir?” Flug asked timidly, setting the flask very neatly back on his work table. The rust red solution inside it bubbled a little, but thankfully settled. “Did, uh… did you, uh, need me…? For something?” He regretted the words once they were out, but out they came.

“Hm? Oh no, Flug. I was just calling to say hi.”

Flug blinked his confusion up at the speaker lodged in the lab wall. “Um… to say hi, sir?”

“Of course,” the speaker rasped back cheerfully. “Can’t a being of coalesced super evil bid his employees a fine hello?”

“I… suppose so?” Flug scratched the side of his head, at a loss. As it happened, Black Hat could do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Good! Now on an entirely unrelated tangent, **get your ass up to my office before I rip out your spine.** ” The speaker actually trembled with his employer’s ire. A thoughtful beat followed, before he added brightly, “It would actually make a very fashionable hat rack, if I could get a hold of some of your ribs while I was at it. Have you ever done décor with human bones, Flug? They’re really quite versatile.”

Flug was already dashing for the door to his lab, heart pounding. No, Flug had never tried his hand at decorating with human remains. He’d never struck himself as an Ed Gein kind of guy. “I-I’ll just be right up, sir!”

“Oh.” Black Hat sounded vaguely disappointed, of all things. “Well, fine then. Hurry it up.”

At the risk of a hat rack suddenly grabbing the demon’s interest for the afternoon, Flug sprinted full tilt up the dark winding staircase for Black Hat’s office. Top floor, west wing, of course. Only the most forbidden sounding places. 

Go big or go home.

Flug hurried for everything he was worth. One of _many_ things that made Black Hat terrifying was the erratic beat of impulse that was inherent in all evil. Not for the sake of silliness or some other such thing, mind, but rather it was the lack of curbed instinct that gave Black Hat free range to do what he wanted. Unshackle a spirit entirely, they said, and you would have unspeakable horrors to show for it. Unshackle a spirit like Black Hat’s, well… you might want to avert your eyes.

So in spite of the stitch in his side, in spite of his breath clambering into a wheeze, Flug pressed on. Top floor, west wing. An ornate mahogany door in the shape of a top hat awaited him, but he knew better than to simply open the door and walk in. Called on specifically or not, yeah, you bet your ass Flug knew better.

He rapped weakly with a knuckle when he could stand straight, though he was still gasping for breath. “Black… Hat…! Sir?” he whistled out. “Doctor Flug… here…! I’m…! Here, sir…!”

The door practically shuddered in its frame, and then ominously creaked open. The sound alone sent a chill ringing down every ridge in Flug’s spine while his skin tightened into gooseflesh. Black Hat made it a point to never oil those hinges for just that reason.

“Yes, yes, get in here, Flug,” Black Hat greeted him sourly. “Get in here! Hurry it up!”

He obeyed, tapping his fingers together nervously. “U-um…! You, uh… you wanted to, uh…” 

Oh god, what had he done _now?_ That was the infinitely better question that perhaps he _should_ have been asking. 

Was he taking too long with his newest prototype? He kept _telling_ Black Hat the next line of mind control devices for their autumn catalogue was going to take some _time._ Flug was coming along rather nicely on some well-hidden frequency emitters in the stones of commonplace jewelry for women, at least, though hiding a mind control device on a man’s rhinestone belt was a bit more difficult than you’d think. Although he’d made some headway with the cellphone line, still he’d –

“Lose the pants, Flug.”

He froze, and from what he could guess, so did all of time and every atom occupying that particular space around him.

“Wha…” Flug cleared his throat. “Um… pardon me, Mister Black Hat?” 

The notorious villain only spun easily in that elaborate red leather chair of his, fingers steepled pensively beneath his chin. Black Hat eyed him with the coarse and pitiless hunger of a crocodile. “The pants, Flug,” he said in a biting rasp. “Lose them. Down they go.”

“Y-you can’t be serious…!”

Black Hat rapped his fingers impatiently along his desk. “That hat rack is going to make one hell of an addition to the foyer, unless you feel like unbuckling those trousers, boy.”

A million different scenarios raced through Flug’s mind at that moment, while he retreated into himself to go knocking about for any remaining shreds of his sanity. He was coming up a bit short. Black Hat had made a decidedly short road of that search whenever he went about it.

_Still, what the hell is he thinking?! Is he…? Is he going to…?!_

Regardless of what was going to happen, Flug’s hands fumbled a bit at the top button. 

_What am I doing?! I can’t just…!_

But he was terrified for both his job and his life, and so he found that yes, yes he could. 

His pants sank into a rough pile of folds around his ankles, baring the scientist in a pair of blue airplane boxers that warmed a pair of scrawny, hairy legs. He felt his face burn beneath the paper bag, so intensely he was afraid the bag would catch and combust at any second, but he kept his gaze pinned solely on his boss across the room. Black Hat’s one visible eye coasted up and down the pale arcs of Flug’s legs, betraying no sign of either approval or revulsion. Only cold, unflinching appraisal.

Flug swallowed, his heart somehow thundering even harder now. 

_This is just me following orders,_ he reminded himself, however painful it was. _It’s just following orders!_

Or at least, that’s how he would justify it.

“U-um…!” The blistering heat clambered like wildfire up his neck, bloomed in his ears. “I-is this, uh… i-is this going… s-somewhere, sir? O-or…?”

“No,” Black Hat replied. “I just wanted to see if you’d do it.” With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the scene readily. “Pull your pants up, you jackass. We’ve got something else we need to discuss.”

He gladly obeyed, though not without some indignant muttering about other things that could bear discussion before anything like this happened ever again.

“We need to discuss _security,_ Flug, to answer your question.”

Flug chanced a look up as he fastened his jeans. “Security?”

“That’s what I said, glad you could keep up,” Black Hat snapped, his visible eye narrowing into an angry slit. He rose from behind his desk, hands folded neatly into the small of his back as he crossed the office in neat strides until he reached a small black chest on one of his many bookshelves. It was accented in bits of silver on its corners, closed up by way of a padlock in the shape of a gargoyle’s head, its leering mouth the jagged keyhole. 

The scientist winced. He already knew where this was going. When you were a star in the rings of such a morally loose field as villainy, of all things, the fanbase tended to be far worse than you would expect for a bestselling author or even the most esteemed movie star. In fact, Black Hat’s fan mail tended to get so graphic that it literally left Flug sick to his stomach reading it. He’d been tasked once with ‘mailroom duties’, that is, reading and producing generic responses to fans that wanted Black Hat to know _every_ lurid detail of just how far they would go for the chance at a meeting, and well… 

One week had been enough for him. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

Black Hat unlocked the chest with a grim looking key, and took out a manila folder loaded with letters. Presumably all from one person. “This woman is beyond insane, and I know I say that quite a lot,” he muttered.

“You do, sir.”

“Shut up, Flug, I’m in an obviously expository mood, here.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Anyway, this woman has been _hounding_ me more than they usually do,” Black Hat griped, tearing out a little empty sandwich baggy. “Know what she asked me to do with this?”

Flug clenched his teeth. “I can only guess.”

“She wanted me to shave off my body hairs and send either those, or any teeth I have lying around, back to her. So she could eat them. So she could, quote, ‘feel me inside her’.”

“Oh, god…” Flug rested his head in his hands. His peanut butter and banana sandwich threatened to gorge its way back up his throat. 

Black Hat set the baggy aside on his desk. “That’s one of the more normal requests I’ve gotten from her,” he said. “You don’t even want to know what she wanted me to do with the silicone mold kit she sent me.”  
“  
No, no!” Flug held up a pair of defensive hands, as if to shield himself from the words if Black Hat so chose to let them fly. “That’s okay, Black Hat, sir, I think I… get the point.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Who even is she, anyway?”

The supervillain rolled his eyes. “Calls herself _Demencia,_ or some such thing. Supposed up and comer, you know all _that_ rot.”

Flug sighed. 

Yes, he _did_ know all that rot. On Black Hat Inc.’s own internet forums, there were plenty of ‘up and comers’ looking to delve into villainy. They _openly_ bragged about all their plans for world domination, showed off pictures of their homemade terrorist devices, or they shrieked about Black Hat himself with the literacy of a raccoon being swung into the keyboard by a senile baboon.

Many of them were what Black Hat construed as ‘the tragic pantywaist’, or rather, the teenage demographic that fantasized about getting even with a ‘stupid conformist world’. Flug and 505 had been charged with mod duties, and Flug didn’t even want to count how many times he had seen signatures bearing Shakespearean quotes in Comic Sans (“the villainy u teach me, i will exegcute…”). 

Now, one user in particular called DEMENCIAROCKON, wasn’t quite _that_ sort of bad. She was what Black Hat called ‘too poor to pay attention, Flug, now get that shit off my desk before I set you on fire’. She wanted to go into villainy, but a college student’s budget meant she was a do-it-yourselfer. She had her own way. Villains like Black Hat watched Demencia’s sort with wry agitation, what doctors must have felt watching med students learn all there was to know in half a semester with their first textbook.

She was also what Black Hat called ‘oh great, off her bloody trolley while we’re at it’.

Demencia often sent letters. And dedicated badly edited music videos on ViewToob, which she was happy to link in her letters. And sent selfies of herself outside Black Hat manor, and each photo managed to get a yard or so closer to venturing the property…

“Take a look at her most recent _work,_ Flug.” Black Hat angrily flashed Demencia’s latest contribution.

Flug wished he could say he was surprised, but he truthfully wasn’t. The photo was Demencia’s best selfie yet; the lanky redhead was grinning and next to straddling Black Hat’s desk, flashing devil horns on both hands.

He rested his head in his hands again.

“My thoughts exactly,” Black Hat grunted. A twirl of the photo in his fingers later, and it caught black fire and promptly shriveled out of existence. “And just how the _bloody hell_ did she manage to get in? I rather thought I tasked you, _specifically,_ with matters of security within the mansion.”

“U-uh… well, sir, I did manage t-to, um, tune up the motion sensors, uh, in the… front… yard…?” Flug squeaked out, before the rest of the excuse died deep in his throat. He realized about halfway through that Black Hat’s calm was serving a smooth cover for building fury.

“Did you, now?” Black Hat asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

“I-I’m sure I did, sir,” Flug insisted, in spite of his voice cracking. “I-I’m not sure how she got by! The, uh...! The, um, security system should have alerted me! Should have alerted me when, uh, when anyone s-set foot on the perimeter…!”

Black Hat folded his arms, baring a none too friendly mouthful of teal teeth. “Let me make something perfectly clear to you,” he began in a rather decided growl. “I hired you because despite a few glaring issues, despite a rather _stupid_ choice on your part, you still have your use to me. You still have your _potential_ to me. I’m willing to concede you that much, even on a bad day.”

Flug couldn’t help himself. He felt his heart bounce a little despite all his building terror, and he sat up as attentively as a puppy at the dinner table. He would hate himself for it later, but for now, he savored what he could get.

“Don’t forget,” Black Hat intoned as sharply as claws across a face of granite. “My employ comes about as freely as any other compliment I offer.”

 _Yeah, okay,_ Flug thought before he could stop himself. If there was one thing almost vehemently clear about villainy: nobody was in it for the friendships and snickerdoodles. Everyone was a user, everyone around you was cannon fodder, or at least, that’s how it was supposed to work.

Either way you spun it, Flug understood the real meaning at work here. Either tighten up security, or consider your balls gone.

“Not very freely at all?” Flug hedged.

“Fix things up around here, lad. That’d be my suggestion.”

Black Hat didn’t have to suggest things twice all that often. 

-

That night was not a good one to be Flug. Now, one could reasonably argue that a bad night to be Flug didn’t need to be particular, his situation being what it was, but tonight specifically? He’d been tasked with orders. Very specific orders, upon which his job, his fractioned sanity and possibly his life depended on. Upon the blatting of the mansion’s alarms, and no visual on an intruder on any of his lab monitors to show for it? It was very safe to say two things:

One, Flug was failing his specific orders fantastically.

Two, 505 would be entrusted with all his worldly possessions, provided Black Hat didn’t sell them for a quick profit. 

Three, scratch Two, because Black Hat would probably get right on dumping Flug’s stuff on EvilCraig’s List. 

Flug was searching a small shoal of monitors next to his worktable with the frantic, twitchy attentiveness of a chipmunk on his fifth line of blow. The alarm had gone off. _Something_ had triggered the motion sensors in the entrance foyer, but the question was, _what?_ Flug peered through the single eye of every camera and came up short on each count. Where the hell _was_ she? What _happened?_ And more importantly, how had she not set off the motion detectors along the gate?

Beside him, 505 managed a low, worried croon. 

“We’ll get her, 505,” Flug muttered, reaching out to give the bear’s ears an absent scratch. “This… this is what being a supervillain is! Or at least, partly. Keeping people out of your lair, capturing the heroes that try to bust in, I mean, what kind of villain would I be if I couldn’t even manage that, right?”

Especially if he somehow couldn’t capture a single rabid fangirl. 

505 gave his creator a fervent nod. A believer’s nod, one that spoke of his confidence.

Somehow, Flug had the invasive feeling that his pride was about to sustain some serious wounding. 

“But… but even if I mess up,” he said to himself, easing a sleek control panel out of a drawer of his worktable. “Even still, I’ve got to try!”

Determination renewed, he cycled through the feeds again at a breakneck pace. He didn’t dare blink. A twitch, a shadow out of place, a flicker, it was all he needed. If he could just catch a sign, if he could just see – _there!_

In the kitchen’s second feed, Flug had caught the barest sliver of red darting by. Narrowing his eyes, he took to the controls of that camera and almost sent it whirling off its axis as it turned in search of her. Thankfully, he wasn’t searching long. The large refrigerator door was wide open, and standing contentedly on one leg while she bustled through its contents was none other than _her,_ cheerfully scrounging up stuff as if looting a supervillain’s fridge for a midnight snack was an every day indulgence.

“Got’cha,” Flug snarled, trying to pave over the jittery relief in his voice with some malevolence. “Now, let’s see how you enjoy, uh… this…! Uh…!”

Damn it, why did other villains make these snappy pre-destroying-nemesis lines look so easy?

“505, can you help me out, here?” Flug asked, slouching over his controls.

The bear frowned and shrugged helplessly.

“All right, uh… nevermind. Let’s focus on saving our butts first,” Flug said, tapping in a few commands on the control panel. “ _Then_ we’ll work on the snappy one-liners.”

“Rrrrrm.”

“It’ll be all right, buddy. Just watch!”

One eighteen digit activation code later, and she was going to be in for a big surprise.

A surprise, he watched with a welling sadism, in the form of the refrigerator clambering up off the red and black linoleum floor and sprouting _limbs._ Long, whirring mechanical monstrosities, each arm equipped with precision auto-targeting stun rays, freeze rays, and motion activated heat seeking missiles. As the fridge proceeded to right itself on the arches of its spindly mechanical legs, he couldn’t help a prideful grin under his grocery bag. 

_This_ was what it felt like, to deploy your creation on an enemy. 

It was akin, he imagined, to how those snooty rich kids at the Tech felt whenever they flaunted their new gadgets and computers, things that _mommy and daddy_ could afford ten of, if something should happen. Only those brats couldn’t possibly know what this felt like. A few of _those_ brats, who usually aspired to become _heroes_ (thanks, Batman, for paving the way for rich idiots to slap on a mask and call it 'operating outside the system') could _never_ know the joy of watching something _you_ had built go on a long awaited rampage.

Flug watched with a rising delight as the girl bolted, her midnight snack forgotten. She ran to the left, sprinted right, barreled and flipped over every spark and shot fired her way. She had to move, keep moving just to avoid being hit.

“That’s it,” he practically crooned, rubbing his hands together diabolically. “Thaaat’s it. Just wear yourself out! Then we’ll get to see how you got past the front lawn!”

“Rrrrm?”

“Oh, uh! _After_ we turn you over to Black Hat first, um… of course!”

505 sighed, shaking his large head. 

The fridge continued its violent assault on the girl and the rest of Black Hat’s kitchen, its flung open doors swinging and dumping groceries as it went. Flug winced. That would be weeks’ worth of stores he’d have to replace, and no doubt in his mind lingered that it would come out of his paycheck.

“Huh… y’know, I… this probably wasn’t one of my more practical ideas,” Flug admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck. “In fact… the hell was I _thinking?!_ ”

505 sadly looked on as the fresh fruits and vegetables he’d fetched from the farmer’s market the other morning splattered into casualties. 

“Sorry, pal. This’ll be worth it, though! Once we get this intruder, we can… replace… all the…!”

He trailed off as he looked back at his monitors and attempted to get a beat back on the fray in the kitchen. Keyword there being ‘attempted’, because there was no longer any fight to speak of. In fact, the refrigerator had been toppled flat onto its back, its metallic tendrils limp and sparking right beside it. From what the scientist could see, its central front unit had been caved like a bashed in skull; he could even see the crisscrossed imprints of some sort of blunt weapon. 

Demencia had not been kind to Flug’s creation, once she’d found the chance to get up close and personal with it.

“What?! What?! No! Damnit, damnit, _damnit,_ what happened?! What went wrong?!”

“Rrrrrrr! Arrr?! Arrrrrhmmmm!” 505 was searching the monitors as desperately as his creator was, only to come up short on his end, too. 

“Okay, okay…” Flug tried a breath or two. “L-let’s not panic, here! L-let’s not freak out, okay, 505? We’ll just have to start the search again, m-maybe hope that she hasn’t reached the staircase…!”

“Arrrrrrr!”

Flug gulped, in a college try to ease down what felt like a softball now lodged in his throat. “U-um… just out of scientific curiosity, 505… y-you don’t… think she managed to….?”

The look the bear offered was not a promising one.

About five seconds later, Flug made a beautifully screaming exit from his lab, ignoring the stitch in his side and the nausea boiling in his stomach and the watery ripple in his knees. He ran as if his sneakers had caught fire. 

Ten seconds later, he was a quarter up the staircase and wondering if he’d had a good run. 

He could hear the shrill cry of his high school coach’s whistle now, only the whistle died into the howling banshee wail of the _things_ Black Hat had on deck for failures like him, and he could hear his father thundering about _what that boy’s gonna turn out to be_ over the distance of about five or six years, and he could hear Black Hat roaring murderously in his office already, and he could hear Black Hat’s menace when he would have to say –

“I’m sorry, sir! I’m sorry, sir!” Flug panted, gasped as he practically collapsed on his knees in Black Hat’s office. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried to stop her, I tried, I did, I tried my best to stop her and I even tried a new…!” 

Flug knew, with a dread that sat cold and coiled in his stomach, that he would eventually have to face down the beast. So bracing himself on shaking hands, he ever so slowly lifted his head.

The sight surprised him. 

Black Hat was sitting with an almost demure calm behind his desk, a thick black leather tome open in his hands. He sat as entranced by it as any avid reader with some catching up to do for the next meeting of their local book club.

When the entity spared him a glance, Flug felt his heart hitch in his chest.

“Those damages to the kitchen are coming out of _your_ pay,” Black Hat greeted him coldly. There was still quite an undercurrent of dark menace in his tone. Black Hat was pissed off, no doubt about it, but frankly Flug was pleasantly surprised to find himself still in one piece. “A giant robot in a kitchen. You’re supposed to be _**practical, you idiot!**_ ”

“U-uh… y-yes, sir, um…! Not… one of my best ideas?”

“No. It _**wasn’t.**_ ” Black Hat slammed the book shut, and with a snap of his fingers it withered into a twist of dark smoke and vanished. “But your sorry arse is in luck. You may have one last chance to prove you aren’t an **utter waste.** ”

He pointed across the office. Hanging by a chain from the vaulted ceiling of Black Hat’s office was a rusty iron cage, and sitting cross-legged inside it, pouting, was none other than Demencia. 

Flug wondered why he hadn’t noticed that first, before he remembered, oh right, pleading and begging for his life. At least she’d been caught… though to be captured by Black Hat was not a fate that he envied, nor wished on anyone. 

Black Hat stood calmly from behind his desk, before crossing the room to confront their intruder. His grin was wide, almost salacious. Flug had a feeling this wasn’t because Black Hat fancied redheads. He stood back, swallowing again and keeping silent. This was it. This was Black Hat in motion, this was a scant look into true villainy, and he wasn’t going to ruin the mood for anything.

“Well, pet,” Black Hat greeted her calmly, going out of his way to rattle the bars of her cage while he was at it. “Looks like we got caught traipsing where we didn’t belong.”

Demencia grinned back. “Ohhhh, I guess so,” she said. “Man, I really hope you don’t _tie me up_ or bind me with _handcuffs_ or something, ‘cause y’know, I’d _really_ hate that!”

Black Hat rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’ll just bet you would, you trollop in heat.”

“And y’know, I’d really _super_ hate it if you bit me right on the neck,” Demencia continued on, her grin widening. “I mean, I broke into your _super cool evil mansion of evil_ an’ all, and I was even gonna steal food out of your _fridge!_ ” She proceeded to horrify Flug with a dreamy sigh. “Man, I might even deserve a spanking! I’d super _not_ be into that at all!”

With an ominous swirl of smoke, Black Hat manifested a particularly nasty looking iron mace. “Even with this?” he asked in a low snarl.

“Oh _hell_ yeah – I mean, oh, _no,_ not _that!_ ” Demencia threw her arm up theatrically over her forehead. “Definitely not _that!_ ”

A very awkward beat passed.

“Flug,” Black Hat finally sighed, disposing of the mace with a wave of his hand. “Get over here.”

He hurried to his employer’s side without a word. 

Despite that rather interesting exchange, Black Hat didn’t seem the least bit deterred. In fact, he was grinning again. “There might be a use for this one after all,” he said. “You’d call yourself a mad scientist, wouldn’t you?”

“Hey!” Demencia cried indignantly. “Who’s _this_ jerk-off?! You let some twiggy little _geek_ with a bag come work for you, but not _me?_ ”

“U-um… yes, sir,” Flug said, deciding it was best to ignore her little jabs for now.

“Then here’s your chance to _prove it,_ ” Black Hat said, still grinning hideously. It was the mad grin of a shark through a cloud of blood, the lusty grin of dark figures hiding beneath the rocks, the hungry grin of shadowy things Flug never wanted to see, even in his worst dreams. “Take this girl and prove just how _into_ mad science she’ll be.” 

_A human test subject?_ His mind tripped and scrambled over the very prospect. _He wants me to…?!_

“What?! No fair!!” Demencia cried. “I came here for _you!_ I don’t wanna get stuck with the _nerd!_ ”

Flug was quite sure the feeling was mutual. He trembled where he stood, his knees next to knocking like a pair of clapsticks. Machines, he could do. Chemicals, he could do. Utilizing both in horrendous combinations for wiping out heroes, Flug had that in spades, even Black Hat could be shaken to admit it on a good day when his inventions worked without a hitch. Human test subjects, though…

Was this Black Hat demanding a second attempt at a bioweapon? He supposed after splicing up 505, he owed it another try, but…

“I… well, I guess there’s potential…” Flug murmured, looking her over as she started to pace angrily in her small prison. “I mean, I’d have to look over my notes and see what materials I have left for genetic alteration, but–”

“ _Nuh uh!!_ ” Demencia shouted, rattling the bars in outrage. She pointed furiously at Black Hat, taking whatever futile swipes the cage permitted while he stood there, smirking. “I didn’t come here just to get dragged down to some little _dork’s_ lab and shot up with stuff! This is a _joke!!_ ” A few more useless swipes, followed by an anguished cry. “Throw me in your torture chamber!! Take me to a nightmare world and break me! String me up on a table and _punish me!_ I came here _for you!!_ ”

Black Hat grinned. “Oh, doesn’t everyone,” he drawled, tapping his fingers. “But I’m afraid I just don’t have the _time_ to pencil you in, love.”

“ _No!! This isn’t fair!!_ ”

“Life’s not fair, pet, you’ll learn that one quickly enough.” Black Hat turned from her in a rather spindly motion better suited for wolf spiders than any sort of human being. “Flug. Get everything nice and prepared for our little guest.”

“Y-y-yes, sir,” Flug stammered. “R-right away, I’ll take care of it! I’ll m-make arrangements immediately…!”

“And Flug?”

He looked up just in time to see Black Hat’s grin vanish, curl into a snarl that bared rows of impeccably razor sharp fangs. Fangs that, if Flug had to guess, would have no trouble at all shredding up his organs if the demon so chose because Black Hat was what we in the business will call batshit insane while agreeing that tempting him to use those fangs is never an intelligent idea.

“ _ **Don’t. Fuck. This. Up.**_ ”


	2. New Madness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....wow. 
> 
> uh, haha well this is awkward. the only excuse i can offer for not finishing this thing is that... well, i kind of completely forgot about this fic. whoops. hopefully seeing it to completion will make up for it? :D;

Flug was going to try his absolute hardest not to fuck.  This.  Up. 

How he’d fare on that one, well… that remained to be seen. 

Black Hat had made use of his power to teleport Demencia’s cage down to his lab, of course.  It had appeared in a swirling wisp of black flames alongside a couple screams of what Flug figured to be damned souls (“My favorite power source for the little tasks, really,” Black Hat had crowed in good cheer on the subject.  “Damned souls, second only to orphan tears!”). 

On a related note, Flug wasn’t sure why he bothered to keep asking such questions when he knew the answers were going to be horrible beyond his comprehension.

Not that this was related to the matter at hand.

That matter at hand being what he was to do with a rabid fangirl, who was currently making faces at him while she dangled from his laboratory ceiling like a properly caged canary. 

505 approached her, poking the bars with a wary paw.  “Arr?  Rrrrrmmmm?”  He glanced at Flug, whining his disapproval.  Not that Flug would have expected anything less, still, the bear’s conflicting morality here wasn’t helping.

Demencia crashed into the bars with a flying leap, screeching like a deranged lemur.  She even went as far as to bare her teeth in a feral grin, letting the spit fly.

“ _Baaarrrrowwrrrr!_ ”  505 practically jumped out of his skin, arms flung over himself. 

The young woman cackled.  “Ha, haaaa!  What a _wimp!_   Hey, nerd, this teddy bear of yours is a total pushover!”  She leaned fashionably on her elbow, her legs a lax 4 shape.  “What’d ya even make him out of, anyway?  Cotton candy and dandelions?”

Flug ignored her, sifting through an old notebook on his worktable.  They were the same notes he’d started on, way back in the early days when he’d begun his genetic sequencing project on 505.  What an endeavor _that_ was, or well, excuse him, what a _fuck up_ that was.  505’s cutesy appearance had been meant only to _mask_ the godless menace of a killing machine, but he and Black Hat had both seen how that had gone.  He didn’t really feel like letting it slip to his new prisoner that she might not have been too far off the mark, even if it _had_ been for the sake of his experiment. 

“Hey!  Nerd!  I’m talking to you!”

Grinding his teeth a little, he dutifully ignored her and went back to his notes.  God, what could he even _use_ her for?  It was nice to start out with an already living and breathing specimen, since it made things decidedly simpler, but what could she even do? 

 _Cybernetic weapons?_ Flug wondered for a second. _Yeah, that’s out.  Last thing Black Hat would want is for her to be able to_ shoot lasers _at him while she’s stalking him._ Hell, that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, that particular camel bearing Black Hat’s restraint on making him into a coat rack.

“Nerd!  Nerrrrrd!  Neeeeerrrrrd!”  Demencia trailed off, eventually making it a game to rattle the bars while singing his new nickname in a high lilt.  “Neeeeerrrrrrrrrd!  Nerd!  Nerd-nerd!  Nerdnerdnerdnerdnerd!” 

“All right, _enough!  Stop it!!_ ”  Flug spun on her, flustered.  To his credit, he’d gone a solid five minutes before her voice ran in rusty nails over his concentration.  “That is _not_ my name!!  My _name_ is Doctor Flug Slys, I have a respectable, _diabolical_ PhD in mad sciences, and I’ll be treated as such!” 

Demencia’s grin at that was the sort often spotted in back alleys, a few precious seconds before someone went missing.  “Oooh, he speaks at last,” she mocked, wiggling a suggestive eyebrow.  “What’re you gonna do about it, nerd?  Give me a pop quiz?  Go ahead and open this cage up and we’ll **_see what happens._** ”

He turned back to his notes, grumbling.  “Ohhh, you’ll see soon enough,” he said, trying his absolute damnedest to sound menacing.    

God, did he try.  He even rubbed his hands together menacingly. 

“You’ll see, and _then_ you won’t be laughing!”

When Demencia broke off into cackling again, Flug figured he could call that one a failure.

“Okay, okay, Bag Boy.  You go ahead and do your thing,” Demencia said.  “I can wait!  Second you open that door, I’ll just bust your kneecaps and then be on my way.”   

Flug grit his teeth.  “What, back to Black Hat’s office?  That’s kinda why you’re _in_ this mess, just in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Yeeeah, but if I try it again, he’ll _have_ to deal with me, himself,” Demencia replied happily.  Flug chanced a look over his shoulder, and saw her practically swooning into the bars like a drunk teenager.  Her look was dreamy, distant, and Flug had no doubt that it was utterly bare of sanity.  “He might even take me to his deepest, _darkest_ torture chamber!  _God,_ he might even _flog_ me!!  And in the height of passion, as he brings that cat of nine tails down a fifth time and takes that extra turn on the rack, who _knows_ what’ll happen, right?!” 

It took every solid effort on the scientist’s part not to gag at the new flurry of mental images.  Standing quite a few cautious feet from Demencia’s cage, 505 glanced at his creator in stark confusion.

 _Long story, buddy,_ Flug silently muttered, answering the undoubted question in 505’s mind right then.  _Long story for when you’re way, way older._

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Flug cut in with a decided hurry before she could go into details.  “I don’t wanna know all your twisted little fantasies!  I’ve got _work_ to do!”

Demencia grinned wider.  “The Black Hat Inc. forums seem to _like_ all my twisted little fantasies,” she chirruped.  “Have you _seen_ some of the reviews I’ve gotten for my fanfiction?”

“I’m sorry, are we _honestly_ still talking about this?”

“Yup!”

“No.  No we’re not.”  Flug tugged open a drawer and began to forage, rather loudly.  “And if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna test out a new _tranquilizer_ I’ve been working on!” 

“‘He stares at me, captivated, his perfect gaze fixed and _smoldering_ like a large pale moon behind that flawless monocle, burning with a super hot want that spirals so sexily down to his groin’,” Demencia began, snickering when that only had Flug trying desperately to rummage louder.  “‘I can only stand there, bearing the weight of his really hot gaze before I jump him and we start making out, tongues wrestling slickly, and it’s super hot!!’”

“505, find me that sequencing file that I put up in the cabinet last week, please,” Flug squeaked out, frantic. 

“‘He bares those perfect toxic looking teeth at me, that forked serpentine tongue rolling contentedly in sweet caresses over my neck, and I can barely breathe as those gloved fingers slide up…!’” 

“You _memorized_ your own stupid _fanfiction?!_ ” Flug cemented his hands as best he could over his ears.  “God, you really _are_ sick!  Stop, stop, _stop, **stop!!**_ ” 

Demencia fell flat on her ass, laughing so hard she could barely breathe.  “Does it hit a bit too close to home for ya, Bag Boy?” she asked, eyes sparkling with tears by the time she could compose herself.

“As a matter of fact, no!”

“I mean, whatever floats your boat,” she continued with a delighted shrug.  She was under his skin now, and she intended to wriggle like a maggot while she was there.  “Sure I’ll rip your spine out and hang you with it down the line, ‘cause y’know, everyone knows that he’s _mine,_ but until then I don't blame you for wanting him…!”

“No, I don’t,” Flug snapped.  “And _you’ve_ got more problems than _I_ do for even _wanting_ him to…to…!  You know…!”

Demencia bit her lip, perfectly proud of herself.  “The images are _there_ now, aren’t they, Bag Boy?”

“God _damnit!_ ” 

He foraged ever more loudly, snarling to himself for not tranquilizing her from the get-go as she fell back and _howled_. 

 

***

 

Genetic sequencing, or chromosomal translocation, to be more accurate, was a gigantic pain in the ass. 

Flug had been trying to force various kinds of fusions with a sample of Demencia’s test cells for the past four hours.  So far, the reaction wasn’t what he’d had in mind. 

He sat before one of his consoles with the composure of an ancient maestro at a forte piano, awash in the pale green glow of his monitor.  Cells danced and juddered across his goggles.  His fingers danced as lightly as feathers over snow on his controls. 

Frustrated as he might have been, Flug was entirely in his element. 

“You _say_ you want a _revolutiooon,_ well, you _knoooow_ , we _all_ wanna _change_ the world…!” Demencia belted into a second round of the song, tapping her shoes against the floor of her prison to keep rhythm.  He should have known her little ‘nap’ would have been short lived.  God knew there was nothing else normal about her.  “You tell me that it’s _evolutioooon,_ well, you _knoooow,_ we _all_ wanna _change_ the _world…!_ ”

“Oh for god’s sake,” Flug muttered, rubbing at a coming migraine.

“Hey!  Bag Boy!”  Demencia jumped at the bars, grinning pertly at him.  “You got another hit of that stuff?  I think that’s the best I’ve slept in a month!”

“I’m surprised I had anything strong enough to counteract the Red Bull undoubtedly crushing your kidneys.”

“I _know,_ right?!  C’mon, gimme another one!” 

“If I did, there’s a good chance you’d _die._ ”

Demencia swung back and forth, rattling the cage until Flug half feared the metal might bow in her grip.  “C’moooon, take a chance!  Roll the dice!”

Flug forced himself to ignore her and kept typing, writing up the results of his last attempted fusion.  A failure, of course. 

“Shoot me!  Shoot me again!”

“I’m going to remove your voice box.”

“Do it, bitch, you won’t!”

Showed what _she_ knew, because Flug ended up shooting her again after all.

 

***

 

It was around four in the morning, fourteen straight hours of testing fusion after fusion, before something finally gave.  No breaks.  Not even a cup of coffee.  Flug felt gray tunnels swoop threateningly around his vision before he shot out a hand onto his console and steadied himself. 

Not now. 

His head pounded in time to the heart monitor now stationed behind him.  His eyes throbbed behind his goggles, red and swollen as muscadines, but he clawed to hold on even by that single thread.  He could hold on.  He could.

**_Progress._ **

It was **_progress._**

A heavy weight came bearing down on his upper back, gentle but firm.  “Bawr…”

“I’m fine, 505,” Flug said, his voice creaking out, the first he’d spoken in hours.  “I’m fine.  I’m _fine._ I’m **_fine._** ”

505 stared back at him sadly, but nodded his understanding.  

A thermos of fresh coffee was left in the bear’s wake.

 

***

****

“Why do you even work so hard for him, anyway?”

Flug forced himself to stand upright, groaning as his spine popped quite loudly back into place.  It was going on six in the morning, not that Flug would have known it if not for the digital clock hanging on his wall.  He had no windows, not this far down in the gut of the mansion, but he’d insisted on keeping a clock.  Time was an orderly thing, a vital thing.  Flug worshiped it for how it flogged him right back and shrieked _DEADLINE_ at him like a devil until his vision blurred.

He turned, loosing a groggy noise from the back of his throat that tasted like coffee and metal.

“No, serious question though,” Demencia said.  She canted her head like a cuckoo at him, dark eyes bright but strangely coherent, for the moment.  “Why do you bust your ass so hard for him?  Not like you could love him like _I_ do, and it’s not like _he_ could ever love _you._ So why even do all this mess?”

Flug rolled his eyes.  “You think _love_ has any place in the way _Black Hat_ operates?”

“For me it does!  ‘Cause we’re _destined_ to be together!  He’ll love me _more_ than he loves evil and we’ll get married and he’ll profess his love for me all over Myface and it’ll be totally in character!  Duh!”

“Who the _hell_ still uses Myface?”

“Quit dodging my question!”

The truth was, he was actually tempted to do exactly that until her attention caught onto something else.  Flug wasn’t particularly proud of how he even came to be into Black Hat’s service; the literal crash and burn of the Angel was not an outstanding memory for him.  The undercurrent of the affair was more painful than the burned flesh that had made a rutted canyon out of his face.  It had hurt more than the near loss of his left eye, more than the whole sordid ‘interview’ he’d given on the beach through a mouthful of dried blood. 

No, Flug simply didn’t like to admit he was _torn_ on the matter.  Not many villains bothered dreaming of working alongside Black Hat of all people, true, but it hadn’t been so much a forged partnership as much as it had been a trap.  _He’d_ been trapped. 

Trapped game. 

Trapped game scuttling back in the cage.

 _And has anything changed since then?_ a cynical voice loved to goad him here and there, poke at him, test him.  _In all this time, has anything changed since that day?_

“Black Hat’s the best at what he does,” Flug finally said, lending voice to the talking points he’d employed a million times in his own head.  “He’s the best at what he does, and if he didn’t have faith in _my_ potential as a villain, he wouldn’t bother keeping me around.  So I have to show him.  I have to show him that it’s not a waste of his time.”

_Or a waste of my life.  A waste of my future._

Demencia scoffed.  “Sounds like something ya teach a leashed dog to say.”

“Dogs can’t talk.”

“You’ve got a giant teddy bear growing a flower out of his head walking around, you fuckin’ Lex Luthor wannabe.  I don’t wanna hear it.”

“Don’t make me shoot you again.”

Even when Demencia finally went quiet, he was still very tempted.

 

***

 

When the time came at last to put her under the knife, he contemplated operating without anesthesia.  He decided against it last minute, falling back on 505 to hold her down to the tempered steel table until he could get the restraints over her wrists and ankles.

Chances were she would have just enjoyed it.

Flug could _feel_ the hot pulse of madness rising in him as he lifted the scalpel.  The beat of it in his pulse was drum-like, feverish in how it rocked his brain.  It was insatiable, blotting everything from the clock to 505’s questionable whine a few careful feet behind him.  _Everything_ fled from it the way fog and snow fled the sun.  He burned like the Angel had.  Pieces of him, gone from the second of the first incisions. 

No rules. 

No ethics. 

No obligations.

Just Black Hat’s order to not fuck this up, now that was imperative for reasons even madness couldn’t ignore.  If he’d had more experience in the field, Flug would have marked it as wild and free as a good fuck. 

He bled as she bled, in a way.

The near bullshit romance of the thought almost left him _grinning_ under the paper bag.

 

***

 

“I… I’m not…!” 

Hours after the madness had passed, leaving her to rest and recover, there were a lot of things that Flug ‘wasn’t’.  There were a lot of things he questionably _was,_ now, staring with horror down upon a now empty table.  _Screwed six ways to Sunday_ came to mind.  _Unquestionably dead_ was yet another.

The shackles were snapped and twisted up like mangled fingers, where she had simply _torn through them_ like tissue paper.

Black Hat, standing to his right, left his expression horrifically cryptic.  A slender brow rose up over the brim of his namesake, and he kept his arms coolly folded.  “Go on, finish it,” he said.  “You’re not… going to be breathing in about ten seconds?”

“I swear, I swear she wasn’t even _conscious_ the last time I checked on her, how could she have _possibly_ –”

“You’re not going to be what we call ‘functionally alive’?” 

“B-Black Hat, sir, I _swear_ there’s no way she could have gone far!!”  Flug’s gaze darted about the room.  He lunged and checked under the operating table for about the umpteenth time, that frantic way he once searched the couch again for his car keys even though he _knew_ they weren’t there.

505, whining mournfully, looked in the drawer of the nearest worktable for any sign of her. 

“You’re not _technically_ going to have a _head_ anymore?” 

In an eddy of dark mist, Black Hat was beside him.  Flug knew it by the distinctly larger hand now wrapped firmly around his neck, claws falling at rest over the exact point of his jugular. 

Flug also knew that was no accident.

“You couldn’t even **_control your bloody experiment for the whole of two minutes._** ”  Black Hat’s razor teeth somehow became narrower, sharper in the dim lighting of the lab.  In the depths of that one visible eye, and even through the filmy glass of the monocle, Flug could see the red bloom of distant fires.  He saw the perfect symmetry of arson in Black Hat’s gaze alone, and wondered fearful things that any other time would have kept his work ethic strong.

 _Any other time,_ Flug corrected himself, reaching up to pry at his boss’s hand.  _Any other time, but this time he might actually –_

“What was my order, Flug?” Black Hat hissed, his grip tightening like iron over Flug’s fingers.  “ **Tell me what my order was?** ”

“Don’t – _gack! –_ fuck this – _grrrhk! –_ up!”

“That’s right, Flug.  So what do we **not bloody do** when we hear that order?”

“We don’t – _oh god, please don’t kill me this time!_ ”

505 came lumbering over, howling ruefully.  “Bawwwrrr!  Bawwwroaaaar!” 

Black Hat whirled on him, none of his fury lost.  “ ** _You_** stay out of it, bear, or I’ll make a **_rug out of you and –_** ”

“Ohhhhhh handsooooooome!  Are you looking for _meeeee?_ ” 

A very abrupt and decidedly long silence descended, as the trio slowly looked up.

Crouched on all fours, clinging to the ceiling with the ease of a house fly, was none other than Demencia.  She lifted her head to better survey the scene below, grinning insanely down at them.  Her red hair fell in an untamed shock around her face, somehow emphasizing the madness that danced in a now distinctly golden eye.  Flug could see it even from where he stood. 

_Damn, did the translocation not take on both eyes?  That’s really strange –_

“W-well, there she… she is… sir…!”  Flug swallowed what felt like a softball near the back of his throat.  It bobbed his Adam’s apple shakily over Black Hat’s loosening fingers. 

“I see that, you **_idiot._** ”  Black Hat’s hand thankfully opened to better let Flug fall, gasping, to the floor.  “Now what the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

“A…!  I-I was going for a genetic s-splice between human and c-chameleon, sir!  C-capable of climbing walls, thanks to modified setae, with super upper body strength for balance.  Her vision’s been modified too, w-with some retinal modification.  She could be useful!  F-for stealth operations, mainly,” Flug sputtered, falling into that uneasy groove as he climbed to his feet.  He felt slow and wrong and vaguely ashamed as he did, so, that was one hint of their usual dynamic back on track.  “She…!  S-she could be useful f-for… labor?  Sir?” 

Black Hat quirked another brow.  “Flug.  On a scale of one to ten, how much do you actually _value_ your life?” 

“Um… eleven?”

“I’d jot you at about a three, or a four,” Black Hat said, glaring at him.  “How do you expect **_anyone_** to find any use for _this?_ ”  Whatever rage had passed earlier, it was finding a swift second wind as he advanced again.  “I give you the best equipment and resources money can **_buy,_** and **_you give me a deranged lizard child!_** ” 

“Yup!!  And heeeere I cooooome!” 

Flug could only watch in unmitigated horror as Demencia flung herself from the ceiling.  She came down with her arms wide, tongue lolling, latching onto Black Hat like a trapdoor spider coaxed from a burrow. 

Black Hat flew off-balance, screaming, flailing as the two went crashing to the floor.  He shrieked obscenities in ancient tongues that literally left Flug’s eyes bulging in their sockets.  He screamed for the death of every world in a galactic vicinity, with promises to crush moons to dust and fill the earth with the meaty stench of death.  He struggled against her as she snuggled against him, cheek to scaly cheek.  He shoved at her, vowing for the slow death of every person who had ever come into _brief_ contact with Flug. 

Demencia giggled.  “You’re so _adorable!_ I could just _eat you up!_ ”

“ _I WILL BUTCHER EVERYONE YOU’VE EVER LOVED!_ ”

The dark spell of the spectacle didn’t hold long.  Flug turned slowly to 505, who had been watching alongside him with morbid unblinking intrigue.

“Let’s…”  Flug chanced a final look at the struggle.  “L-let’s just… let’s just go, 505.”

He hardly needed writing in the stars to see his chance.  The best part of being evil, arguably, was that it required no courage.

505 nodded.  “Bawr,” he muttered sagely.

“Yeah.  Let’s go.”

And as Black Hat wrestled against an evil of a whole other league, a very strange and nigh unfathomable league, even for him, Flug and 505 casually tiptoed out.  Flug half feared the lab doors fluttering shut behind them would give them away, but he only heard more screaming, more struggling.  The questionable thud of a body against the far wall followed, one that would have punctuated the death of the girl for certain, if not for–

“ _Oooh,_ that was _fun!_ You’re so _kinky!_ ”  Demencia giggled a second later.  The skeletal modifications had held well, too.  Flug had never felt more nauseous about his work going right in his life.  “Do it _again!_ ” 

Black Hat welcomed Flug’s newest creation with a shattering roar.

_Not that different from 505’s birthday, really._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that, as they say so fondly, is that!
> 
> any attention/concrit is appreciated! thanks for reading, folks!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! any and all attention/concrit is appreciated! <3


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